MONTREAL — At 3 p.m. Friday, cheques were taken to the Greene Ave. post office and sent registered mail to 125 victims of Ponzi schemer Earl Jones.

Barring weather related delays, the victims should have the money before Christmas.

These cheques represent the proceeds of a class action settlement made by the Royal Bank of Canada to the many men and women Jones defrauded of up to $50 million in the two and a half decades he orchestrated his financial fraud.

The class action suit was seeking $40 million. The bank countered with $17 million without admitting liability for the claims it demonstrated “wilful blindness” to the way Jones was operating.

After the fees for the lawyers who took on the case on spec, the payout to the victims was $12.2 million.

For Jones’s former clients who were eligible for a portion of the class action settlement, it has taken 18 months from the time the lawyers signed off on the payment to the mailing of those cheques.

It has been a long haul, with the past year marred by infighting, petitions by some disgruntled victims objecting to paying the very people that have got them this far, and even one of Jones’s former employees jumping on the payout bandwagon.

And it has been four years, five months and 11 days since the mostly retired victims realized that their life savings, inheritances, retirement savings plans, and in some cases, even their homes, had been lost to the smooth-talking con man.

The settlement of the class action was complicated by the fact that Jones’s bookkeeping and the fictional interest his clients thought they were accruing was all a matter of whimsy.

In one example, a client who entrusted Jones with $1 million over the course of 20 years got an “allowance” of $5,000 a month, did in fact receive more than he or she put in, around $1.2 million. The principal never grew because there was no interest. But based on the statements received, the client felt they had lost a great deal of money. The bottom line: That client gets nothing.

For the rest, the payout is 44.1 cents on the dollar of their actual losses as calculated by the claims adjusters.

The money should have been paid out months ago but for objections from five clients who made their arguments at a public hearing on June 5, 2013, at the Montreal courthouse.

They argued that their adjusted claims were much lower than they should be.

One of those who emerged as a claimant after the money was guaranteed was Debra Stewart, who worked for Jones for many years as he fleeced his elderly clientele. She herself loaned him money in his final months when the scheme was imploding.

Stewart claimed a portion of the payout, which led to a long delay and a judge’s ruling in her favour. Her income from Jones was taken into account in calculating her claim.

Another delay was caused by a lawsuit that was launched concurrent with the class action suit, this one against two brokers who worked for RBC Dominion Securities.

The claimant in that lawsuit charged that Jean-Pierre Ménard and Serge Leclaire, who managed RRSP accounts referred to them by Jones, had liquidated these accounts without the prior knowledge of the client. They sent the proceeds directly to Jones for deposit into the slush account where he co-mingled all his client’s money and also dipped in for his own personal use.

When Royal Bank of Canada settled the class action suit filed by Virginia Nelles on behalf of all the others, one of the stipulations was that no other action against any branch of RBC would be permitted. This was a one-time deal, the lawyers for RBC stated.

The client who was suing for her own account and her mother’s estate refused to back down until this week. RBC broker Ménard died last January.

In all, eight of Jones’s victims have died since he defrauded them of their money, including his brother Bevan Jones, who initially refused to believe he had been taken in.

The Victims of Earl Jones Committee, made up primarily of the children of the victims, have been tireless in their fight to right a wrong since July 2009 when the fraud came to light.

In the past four years they have negotiated with the Canada Revenue Agency and the provincial minister of finance to get refunds for 77 victims who paid taxes on income they never received, and worked with the banks to save 11 homes from foreclosure due to mortgages Jones set up fraudulently.

The group was instrumental in lobbying the federal government for changes to the rules about parole after one-sixth of the sentence for so-called white collar crimes.

Bill C-59, passed after Jones was sentenced in 2010, meant that he would have to remain behind bars for 44 months and not the 22 months in the old laws.

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